A REPORT 

ON THE 

Flour and Hay Inspection 

LAWS 


OF THE 

STATE OK LOUISIANA 

TO THE 

COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATION 


OF THE 


NEW ORLEANS PRODUCE EXCHANGE. 


— P.Y— 


C. B. BUDDECKE. 






Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2017 with funding from 

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/reportonflourhayOObudd 




33 * ) 
B 


New Orleans, May 26th, 1888. 

To the Honorable Committee on Legislation 

of the New Orleans Produce Exchange: 
Gentlemen, 

Permit me to submit the following 
views on the subject of the Hour and hay inspection 
laws of the State of Louisiana. 

These laws present for consideration a question of 
very grave importance, as they involve a principle 
of the highest character, and affect materially the 
general welfare of the people of the City of New 
Orleans and of the State of Louisiana. 

They create and justify only a principle of evil, 
and form precedents for a series of endless evils. 

The character of this principle of evil is easily 
illustrated by applying it to its fullest extent. 

The same principle which justifies a forced inspec¬ 
tion of Hour and hay and a tax on them, also 
justifies a forced inspection of all other articles of 
commerce and a tax on same. 

To subject all articles of commerce to such inspec¬ 
tion and taxation could only tend to the ruin of all 
commerce. 

These laws require the forced inspection of all 
Hour and hay coming to and sold in the city of New 
Orleans and impose a direct tax of two cents on 
every barrel of Hour and ten cents on every bale 
of hay. sold in the City of New Orleans. 


j 


751300 


4 


Their practical operation and result have been and 
are a direct tax on the commerce, trade and business 
of the City of New Orleans, amounting annually to 
a very large sum of money for which the public has 
never received and can never receive the least benefit 

To the extent of the taxes thus imposed, the com¬ 
merce, trade and business of New Orleans are handi¬ 
capped, defeated and prohibited. 

Such laws interfere with, and oppose obstacles to 
commercial business, and deprive the individual 
citizen of his individual liberty, and freedom of ac¬ 
tion, with regard to his own private property and 
business affairs. 

They are arbitrary, harsh, unnecesssary restric¬ 
tions, and a heavy, grievous and oppressive burden 
on the commerce of New Orleans. 

The useless farce of present forced inspection of 
flour can be easily realized from the notorious fact, 
well known to the flour trade, that all traces of 
such inspection very quickly disappear after the 
flour has been inspected, whereby any benefit to the 
final buyer or actual consumer of the flour is ren¬ 
dered impossible. 

Flour in the New Orleans market is not sold by 
means, or on the faith of any inspection, but solely 
on the faith, guarantee and responsibility of the 
seller, like as in the case of all other merchandise. 

Flour, when offered for sale, like all other mer¬ 
chandise, by force of law, must be sound and mer¬ 
chantable. Existing laws provide ample remedies 


5 


for the fullest redress of any injury resulting from 
fraud or any other illegal act of the seller. 

The extreme hardship of such laws is clearly 
shown by the case of a merchant of New Orleans in 
the sale of Hour. A New Orleans flour merchant 
annually is compelled by law to pay besides other 
taxes, liberal State and City license taxes, for the 
privilege and permission of selling flour. 

In addition to such license taxes he is also by the 
flour inspection law compelled to pay to the State 
Flour Inspectors monthly tax hills for the tax on 
flour sold by him, amounting to twenty-live, fifty, 
one hundred, or more dollars per month, according 
to the quantity of flour sold. To the extent the 
merchant pays such tax on the flour sold by him, to 
same extent must the profits of the sale of such 
flour only decrease. 

The merchant, his employees and all parties in¬ 
terested in the flour trade thereby naturally can only 
suffer. Such grievous taxes on the flour trade of 
New Orleans are such a heavy burden as to render 
the flour business unprofitable. 

The harder the struggle of the merchant for suc¬ 
cessful business results, the greater the discourage¬ 
ment from such a constantly increasing amount of 
flour inspection taxation. These inspection laws 
are claimed to be derived from the police power of 
the State which can be, and always is presumed to 
be exercised, only, for the public* good—for the pro¬ 
tection of the public health. 


6 


The flour and hay inspection laws truly render no 
benefit to the public and no protection for the public 
health. 

Where no public benefit—no protection for the 
public health is afforded, all reason for such laws 
naturally fail. 

The hay inspection law, influenced and created by 
the same principle of evil of the flour inspection 
law, is subject to the same objections opposed to the 
latter law. The same considerations and reasons 
which reject the flour inspection law, also reject the 
hay inspection law. 

In the case of the hay inspection law, it has been 
claimed that the tax or charge on hay lias been 
reduced and now only covers a moderate compen¬ 
sation for the weighing of the hay. 

Such claim, however true, can not justify the 
gross injustice of the absolute denial of the right of 
the owner of the liay to weigh his own hay himself, 
or to have it weighed for one-fourth of the cost of 
the charge fixed by law. 

A chief characteristic feature, common to both of 
these inspection laws, is that they apply to and are 
confined only to one particular locality of the whole 
State of Louisiana and — only to the City of New 
Orleans, the entire remainder of the State being re¬ 
lieved of their onerous provisions. 

All of the people of the entire State of Louisiana 
outside of the City of New Orleans, therefore, re¬ 
quire no forced inspection of flour and hay, and, 


thereby evidence most emphatically the truth of the 
fact that such inspection laws are a useless farce 
fraught only with evil, what is also further confirmed 
by the fact that throughout the United States there 
cannot be found another city, afflicted in the same 
manner as New Orleans has been and is. 

The taxation resulting from these laws is thus 
shown to be most unequal and unjust and clearly in 
violation of constitutional law. 

The offices created by these inspection laws are, 
truly and substantially, pure, naked political sine¬ 
cures, intended and designed originally solely as a 
reward to political partisans for polical partisan 
services. These inspection laws, more appropriately, 
could be called and termed laws for the forced 
charity wrung from a victimized public and for the 
reason that the revenues collected under these laws 
are not paid into the public treasury, but simply 
provide an easy support and a comforatble living for 
the incumbents of the offices established by these 
laws. These State Boards of Inspection in the past, 
as political institutions, have been infamous political 
abuses, and have been used, most shamefully, for the 
severe oppression and great injury of the commerce, 
trade and business of New Orleans. 

These laws and the offices created and maintained 
by them, are relics of the corrupt reign of the period 
of reconstruction, and remain still in force, for the 
reason that until now they have accidentally escaped 
all chances for honest judicial or legislative test of 
their merits and validity. 



The subject of flour and hay inspection is justly 
and legitimately a business subject and as such 
should be viewed and treated. 


Hie New Orleans Produce Exchange, a commer¬ 
cial corporation under the laws of the State of 
Louisiana, composed of, and representing a large 
number of the most intelligent merchants of the 
commercial community of New Orleans, are chiefly 
and most directly interested in this subject of flour 
and hay inspection. Such body of intelligent mer¬ 
chants are amply competent to deal with this legiti¬ 
mate business subject, which should be lett entirely 
to them for their action, and the adoption of such 
necessary measures, rules and regulations as may be 
required by the demands and wants of the trade in¬ 
terested. Every principle of equity, justice and law 
condemn such infamous laws, and every one inter¬ 
ested in the general welfare of the Citv of New 
Orleans and State of Louisiana, can only demand 
their total, absolute repeal, whereby much will be 
accomplished for the eradication of a principle of 
endless evil, which in the past has done much harm, 
and in the future can only do more harm. 


For some twenty years past the commercial com¬ 
munity of New Orleans have been struggling for 
relief from such and many other political abuses and 
it is hoped that some relief will now be obtainable. 


Yours respectfully, 


i> 


HIDDEOK E. 





































